If you happened to be living in the UK and scrolling through Twitter last night you would have seen the hashtag #RIPJKRowling and slowly it became top of the Twitter trending charts in other countries too. So is Rowlings dead?
Rest assured that Rowlings is alive and in fine health but the same might not apply to her career. The author of the Harry Potter series, has been cancelled by a number of people because of her latest book which they say is transphobic. The author has been accused of transphobia multiple times due to her opinion about LGBTQ issues. Rowlings’ new book entitled “Troubled Blood” which is being released today, 15th September was being attacked prior to it being out. The novel is about a male serial killer who dresses as a woman while on violent killing sprees.
“Troubled Blood” follows a private detective, Cormoran Strike, as he investigates a cisgender male serial killer who dons women’s clothing to kill female victims. Using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, it’s the fifth book in Rowling’s Cormoran Strike series using the pen name. In “The Silkworm,” the second novel in the series, Rowling portrays a trans character as being “unstable and aggressive.”
Some people took to twitter with comments such as;
“In memory of jk rowling. she ain’t dead, but she killed her own career by proudly hating trans people & no one would really miss her that much anyway,” wrote one Twitter user.
“#RIPJKRowling she [ain’t] dead but her career is,” added another.
“Imagine getting cancelled so hard, we have to pretend that you died,” chimed in someone else.
In June, Rowling defended past controversial transphobic comments in a lengthy essay, which also revealed that she was sexually assaulted as a young woman.
“I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility,” she wrote.
She and 100 other writers and scholars also penned an essay calling for the end of cancel culture, citing an “intolerance of opposing views,” in July.
